Masterpieces Weekly
by
A BOOKISH man, I have but a modest income, yet it is a wonder to me I have any of it left. For I have subscribed to the Publishers’ Weekly, thinking in my simple bookish way I would learn something about trends in literature. And my goodness, have I learned! It is clear to me that if I am going to live the modern, complete, cultured, terrifying, informed, masterful, compelling, up-to-the-minute, powerful life the publishers plan for me, I shall be broke and breathless in six weeks. Either that or I shall have to cancel my subscription.
Let me stick to the issues of July. The thought of the bombardment I am going to get in August, September, October, November, December, and so on, until my subscription runs out, is a little more than I can take when I think of the startling, fascinating, racy, brilliant:, bawdy, strange, shocking, informative, inimitable, interpretative volumes the publishers have planned for me to read. Besides, the Publishers Weekly gives, to a privileged few, information about books from two to three months before they appear, and judging from what is laid out for me in the July issues, I am going to be too busy with my palpitating, expertly told, engaging, sympathetic, heartening, rousing, romantic, beautiful, immensely readable volumes described in July to have time for the October issues of PW. Miss Mildred C. Smith tells me on July 27 that “the book industry has been one of the little islands of comparative calm in the restless seas stirred up by the lapse of OPA, but now that OPA is back again, the literary tempest this fall is going to be marvelous, unprecedented, record-breaking, nationally advertised, and something to set America thinking.
Take fiction, for instance. Right away, on the very first pages for July 6, I find my fall reading is going to open with the most famous book of 1946, a direct story expertly told, although the author never intrudes or points a moral, which takes on meanings from what we have all noticed in the affairs of the world. This is Animal Farm by George Orwell, and it is the dual selection of the Book-ofthe-Month Club for September, and there are to be only 50,000 other copies in the first printing, so I shall have to buy fast to be among the lucky few first purchasers.
Another publisher is bringing out, late in August for only $2.50, an adventurous tale of romance, intrigue, and murder in the vigorous days of America’s youth. But then, for $2.00, I can buy a new kind of murder mystery as thrilling and terrifying as the Atomic Age we live in, with bombs all flying south to reach their targets in a world waiting in terror and mad with fear, and a girl suddenly appearing on the glacier above Burrow 89, whatever that address means. It’s a story that might happen tomorrow, and I don’t see how I can afford to miss this contest between push-button death and the men who live to extract a horrible vengeance from history’s most ruthless criminal.
And then there’s Rex Stout’s first full-length Nero Wolfe novel in six years, which will be backed for the largest sale Stout has ever had. And I’ll have to learn who the distinguished new author is whose robust, earthy novel of nineteenth-century Italy, which weaves a love story, the struggles of a simple parish priest, and the lives of the people in his village in an extraordinary, rich and colorful texture, appears in October. It seems to me I’ll have to have a go at it, unless I get sidetracked by the suspense novel that follows no previous mystery book pattern, which the Crime Club people are publishing earlier. This is an intensely written story of suspense and personalities, and includes an awakening surge of passionate love, being violently shaken by death, and a heroine who is intricately involved. I see also I am going to need the book of practical philosophy to help folks get ahead —the “how” book of successful living, brightly written, gayly illustrated, and packed with the punch that makes book sales that is already out.
The best-selling novel of the fall season has its picture on the cover for July 13 — a dramatic, exciting historical novel of a ship, the men who sailed her, and the women they loved. Besides, $10,000 advertising will start the campaign for this major new novel. I see I’m in for it, because. August is producing a compelling book of mental crack-up for an ever expanding market, filled with characters who are individuals but who have retreated from reality. The same publishers are bringing out another novel, too, about the exciting and eternal conflict between one who is normal and one who is a fanatic, so I can see what they mean by an ever expanding market.
But hold on — Reynal and Hitchcock promise to lead me into a cobwebby, candle-lit world, just the other side of human experience, a strange, intense story that unfolds, which I mustn’t confuse with another exciting first novel, which captures the lush color and vibrating rhythm of the South American jungle, wherein simple, dignified people are brought into sharp focus as they struggle against the corruption and exploitation of the outer world. After the half-lit domain in which I expect to be immersed, it will be a relief to come back to the drama, sorrow, and achievement which fill the pages of Miss Josephine Lawrence’s— a first-rate novelist most engaging, most sympathetic, most heartening story of Minnie Fearing, who is a real woman, deeply appealing, whose victory over doubt and adversity thousands of readers will share with me as a personal triumph. I think I’ll return to normalcy all right, because Appleton-Century have a promotion and advertising campaign worthy of a top best-seller, as they tell me, now in the works.
But fiction is a one-sided diet, and i must save time for serious reading. A giant rises, in all his vast and lusty splendor, from a biography coming in late autumn and sold under the new Viking Protection Plan. Viking is filled with eagerness, It is exciting, 1 hey tell me, to present one of literature’s greatest personalities as portrayed by one of our generation’s foremost biographers. I won’t tell who this is because I don’t want to be unfair to the fascinating story of a man on the previous page, also under the Viking Protection Plan, a man who played a major role in vital issues. This book is going to be one of the year’s big biographies, because it is the masterful portrait of a great American,
I hope Viking gets away with it, because they are also going to publish a warm, human, revealing hook which will remain a contribution by a woman who knows never-before-published anecdotes about the world’s great, and who was the long-time personal friend and close governmental associate of F.D.R. Moreover, they are up against the book everyone has been waiting for, the story of Bernard M. Baruch, not to speak of the masterly biography of a great musician, which is also ihe story of a whole man, that Knopf is producing in September, and an incisive, riotously entertaining biography, built upon firsthand knowledge and extensive original research, about the founder of a religion, a redoubtable fighter, businesswoman, spiritualist, and wild eccentric, who lived one of the most theatrically compelling of modern lives trailing lovers, lawsuits, and wide-eyed converts. Viking is going to have to hump itself. But then, so am I.
It’s all pretty breathless, but William H. Chamberlin promises to help me with his mature viewpoint and ability, which give, his reviews both authority and readability among a widening audience of readers; and where he can’t, Walter Havighurst, a scholar of the Mississippi, familiar with its history, legend, and literature, will write vividly drawn, warmly understanding, and entertaining reviews of regional non-fiction which are bound to carry weight with his readers. And besides, David Appel, distinguished and experienced newsman, editorial writer, lecturer on literature at Western Reserve University and the University of Chicago, with all the qualifications of a successful editor of a Book Review Section, will review the latest literary offerings with insight and understanding in case I don’t get along with either Mr. Chamberlin or Mr. Havighurst.
Across from some information about a novel whose subject is the kind of hell a selfish woman can create for herself in an interplay of physical and psychological drama, and remarkable writing with immediate appeal for a wide variety of readers by Christopher La Farge, Mr. Frederic G. Melcher tells me that there are going to be many temptations to keep control by restraint of free speech and freedom of the press in the years of disorder ahead and that with such temptation it will take all the faith that is in us to keep from adopting or recommending the right of a controlled press in the interests of public order.
I suppose after this statement of Mr. Melcher’s I had better not ask for a little com rolled advertising in the interests of public sense. No, I shall be too busy finding out how career girls gel that way, reading a racy novel about a movie titan, tough, fast, unsparing, or be deep in the fascinating yd terrifying siory of a modern sleeping beauty, a strange siory of a magic spell, a bitter and lonely diplomat, a very frightened young American girl, and a sinister Ambassador — unless I fall for Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, which is exactly the kind of tonic the American people need and which Harper is hacking with the kind of national advertising that makes books sell nationally.
But probably I shall need The Cookbook for Ulcer Patients, published August 27 by a famous gourmet, with easy-to-follow menus and recipes which embrace all ulcer diet rules, yet are energy-giving and delicious, and tasty enough for the entire family.